Footballer Colin Hendry described his wife as "beautiful inside and out" as an inquest heard botched plastic surgery left her "sitting on a time bomb".

Mr Hendry, 45, the former captain of Scotland who also played for Rangers and Blackburn Rovers, described his late wife as he relived her agonising seven-year battle with illness after disastrous liposuction surgery in 2002.

The couple, who lived in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, had been together for 25 years and had four children, Rheagan, Kyle, Calum and Niamh, Bolton Coroner's Court heard.

But on April 10, 2002 she was punctured in the bowel nine times during "routine" liposuction surgery performed by Gustaf Aniansson, at the private Broughton Park Hospital near Preston.

It left Mrs Hendry with terrible injuries to her stomach area, the court heard.

Her abdominal wall "died" and left a gaping open wound which had to be covered with a surgical mesh and required constant dressing.

The punctures to her abdomen started off a "chain of events" in which Mrs Hendry underwent a series of operations to correct the damage - but she never fully recovered and died, aged 43, in July 2009.

Mr Hendry told the inquest that after his wife was transferred to an NHS hospital following the operation, the injuries were examined by other doctors, who were "extremely disgusted".

"They were pretty much mad, to think that that could have happened to somebody," he said.

One doctor tried to report Dr Aniansson to the General Medical Council to get him struck off, but he was "a step in front", Mr Hendry said, and voluntarily removed himself from the British medical register in 2003.